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Sunday, September 23, 2007

My writing has been intensely personal this weekend, and real, my stories too close to the page. I will taper them into distinguishable parts
and dispose of them
later

This is not the bulk of what I wrote by any means but represents
how I felt while experiencing it. I've thought a lot about censorship in my writing of late. Mostly, how that stifles me. How to take a personal experience and be true to myself in the telling - without telling the truth.
There is always a line that kindness shouldn't cross. Isn't there?
Sometimes, for me, stories and poems seem to be in a holding room somewhere in the recesses of my psyche and I am wading through the dross to get to the dance.It was like that this weekend. It won't bring you great insight. It might leave you disturbed. No perfect pretty bows on nicely wrapped packages. More personal inquisition than inspiration.
And daring, brutal, honesty.
Sometimes, you have to wade through shit to get to solace.
It isn't pretty and left much to be resolved.
And in that regard, I guess I did speak the truth.

Aftershocks

Trust has a precarious power to topple even the strong and forgiving
.... when it is broken

I wrote a poem of love
I wrote a poem of hate
I set my pen to dance
and fell headlong into words that cut
my soul, and hurt where they fell
and for once
just once,
I began to censor what I heard.

I didn't like it.

I didn't like it at all.

They sang into sadness
one syllable at a time
and then rose unto joy
sink
ing
again
into what I knew to be true.
They danced back and forth - those words of mine -
with a slow and steady rhythm I could not deny
and would not withhold
and cannot

will not

squelch
Sacred secrets of sin
bastardly barbs they were

What about them made me weep?

I let them hurt
I looked
I hated them
every last one
I saw their power
to wound
to maim
to scar
but I didn't care....
I will not be afraid of words.

So I opened
for once
just this once,
and danced with them.

Deep
penetrating
exhausting
unforgiving

empty

What about them made me angry?

so I began to write about love
and silly things
crooked wiry glasses, candles and dalliance
flirtation and sex and tumbling people

but the joy did not come
It fell
away

I hated what I knew to be love
and I loved what I hated
for it was - long about the time the third button was washed -
that I saw a betrayal
and that was the button
that cost the most

When I am stronger
and not so tired
I will look at it again
but not today

I wrote a poem of love
a poem of hate
and a prayer of peace

Funny how all three rhymes sound exactly the same.

They laugh on my face
and smother my heart;
For what I found,
when the strength of my wet prayer slipped silently
between the folds of my shirt and
danced defiantly down the curve of my breast

was fear

Sprawled in a sensual splat
in a blurry puddle of me
there
at the end
of my shirt
a mirror
Heaven
is

Mimi, What an amazing and different song you sing here. It's wise and beautiful and feels to me momentous. And while I love your humorous voice, and the casual tone that deepens and resonates, playing in the reader's mind, light at first but lingering, this is startling in its intensity. Your poem cuts deep and won't let the reader go. Such range and power--it's as if you've discovered another world and invited us to explore it with you. I can't imagine a more moving art.